Why I Am the Way I Am

What I liked

Good performance.

What I didn't like

I think the show has a long way to go to find nuance to justify its space in this conversation. We need a more complicated discussion on balancing listening with accountability, and what happens when empathy isn’t enough.

My overall impression

In reading the description, I was expecting a much darker look into society’s villains. The show attempts a “both sides” approach to topics, but it seems rather silly to put a vapid social media influencer and a radical feminist (do these really exist in dangerous/influential numbers?) up against a White Supremacist and a Prosperity Gospel Grifter/Preacher. The harms and impact are not comparable.

The show is a call for understanding, but the vignettes are fairly shallow. They attempt to give you an access point for empathy, but for many, the access point is too small to be successful. It’s hard to understand what is intended to be the compelling insight in each monologue that would make the audience member better understand each speaker.

The Q&A that followed really relied heavily on “listening to each other” as a starting point for change. It felt a bit naive. One audience pointed out, how can we place the burden of listening to and understanding abusers on the people who are being harmed by that abuse?

The most compelling point the show makes was in the Q&A when she mentioned that white supremacists are often lonely and isolated and looking for a place to belong. I’ve heard the same of incels. This could have been an interesting point to explore, could have informed an entire one act on its own. I think there is a relationship between feeling pain and causing harm. Understanding the psychology could also lead us to look at broader social conditions that lead to this isolation and loneliness in an attempt to create healthier and healed people as a whole. However, this point only got a few brief sentences, and was crowded out by less insightful content.